Because women universally discharge bodily wastes in a seated position but many women are reluctant to sit on the toilet seats in public lavatories for fear of disease, there has been a recognized need for supplying women with alternatives to sitting on toilet seats. Thus the prior art has devised funnel-like devices which women can manually hold in place while standing erect and which have outlets for directing urine into a toilet bowl or elsewhere. Many of these prior devices are made of flimsy sheet material, usually paper treated so as to be temporarily waterproof, while still being disposable by flushing down a toilet. Not only are these devices difficult to hold in place but they usually require that the user clamp the device in place with her fingers and if the unit is not properly positioned, the results can be decidedly unpleasant.
The patent to Diaz No. 4,305,161 attempts to address this problem by the provision of a substantially rigid wish-bone shaped support frame having legs joined together at one end by a handle and which may be inserted into the open ended seams at the open upper end of a bag. With this arrangement, the user's finger's are separated to a certain extent from the danger zone but, because the legs of the frame are fixed with respect to each other, the user still has the problem of locating the frame in the proper position, with the same bad results if it should be mis-located.
The principal object of the present invention is to reduce the likelihood of mis-location of a urinary aid while providing means for positioning the user's fingers even further away from the danger zone than prior art devices.
A subsidiary object of the invention is to provide a urinary aid for women which enables the unit to be used without the necessity for a woman to remove her panties.
Another object of the invention is to provide a urinating aid for women which can be converted to a defecating aid.